


The Last Post (and Choruses)

by Shardarch



Category: Ian Rutledge Mysteries - Charles Todd
Genre: Cannot Format to Save My Life, Gen, Ian Rutledge is My Fictional Boyfriend, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sort Of, The Epilogue No One Wanted But Me, The Series Isn't Even Over Yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25372657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shardarch/pseuds/Shardarch
Summary: Rutledge had that feeling he sometimes had in the watches of the night, that he was the only person alive and nothing around him was real. It had been a relief to see Hamish in those watches, a reminder that at least one other person still survived. But Hamish had the white square on his breast over his heart. Hamish was going to die.“Not again,” Rutledge said. “Please, not again.”The door to the bunker stood open and a thin, cold light came through it. Rutledge could hear the guns start like distant and abstract thunder. "I dinnae like to go alone," Hamish said quietly. "Will ye no' go with me?"
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Last Post (and Choruses)

**Author's Note:**

> Names have been invented when I couldn't remember them, or when I needed a handy name. There are two or three minor diversions from the canon because what the hell. It could have happened off stage. There might be some head canon at work here. Thanks to Peter Jackson's film "They Shall Not Grow Old", just generally because it's amazing and specifically for the earworm of a song.

“Uncle Ian? Are you asleep?”

The voice was small, very far away and dim. He felt he should answer, felt it was owned an answer somehow, but could not will his jaw to move. He was lying down, he knew, he felt, and there was a faint smell of antiseptic not quite covering the corruption of sick bodies. 'A hospital?' he thought but that seemed unlikely. He could not think of a reason he would be in a hospital. But as he pushed that thought to its logical conclusion, he found he could not really think of why he wouldn't be in a hospital. His immediate memory seemed to float away into a void of white. 'Perhaps I am asleep.'

His immediate circumstances had the flavor of a dream, a hazy quality that felt buoyant and disconnected. His head lay on a pillow and there should be sheets around him but he couldn't feel any weight along his limbs or any support under his back. The voice, though. That had come from somewhere outside the cloud of warm cotton wool wrapped around him. He knew that voice. There was a name attached to it, a story. A reason he should answer its call.

“Darling, I think your great uncle is sleeping now.” Another voice, someone he knew well. Someone he loved. “Let's go find your mother, shall we? I expect she will have a treat for us.”

“All right.” The first voice, young, a girl and one he knew, sounded reluctant. “We'll be back soon, Uncle Ian.”

“Great Uncle Ian,” the other voice said, gently rebuking. There was a smile in it though, and something else as well. Some dark feeling, too large to be named. “You go along now, Jenny. I'll catch you up.”

“I'll be back soon,” the girl, Jenny, promised. He thought he felt in that distant and floating way of dreams a small warm hand touch his own. “Goodnight, Great Uncle Ian.”

Jenny. Jennifer. Named after her grandmothers. Jennifer Frances.

Frances.

The other voice came closer to him, a waft of floral perfume being back a glimmer of Christmases past, laughter and the glint of a crystal bottle in her hands, her pleased protest that it was too much. He tried to speak again to the presence he sensed beyond the dream but no words would come. And anyway she was speaking. She was always good at knowing what he wanted to say.

“The family is here, Ian. Even young Ian and Iona.”

They called him young Ian as a joke. His godson was a sturdy forty with children of his own, but forever young Ian. Something he tolerated with a smile.

“All the way from Scotland. We're all here,” Frances said and he could hear the tears in her voice now. “Even some of the young inspectors from the Yard. The doctors – well. When did you ever follow doctor's advice?” She caught her breath. “I wish you had said something. But you never do. You could have told me, you know. There's nothing wrong with slowing down, having troubles as you get older. You needn't have been ashamed of it. You never had anything to be ashamed of.” A feathery touch on his forehead – perhaps a kiss? Frances's voice in his ear. “If you need to go now, darling, it's all right. But we'll miss you. I'll miss you.”

And she was gone into the haze of white and the scent of violets.

She would be all right, he knew. She had married a good man – John? Simon? He could recall his brother-in-law's face but not the name to go with it. And the children, of course. Alice and Samantha. Young Jenny. No, Jenny was Frances's granddaughter. The children would take care of Frances. Young Ian would see to it. And Melinda, of course. Or Iona. Melinda had already passed away. Still, Frances would be all right. That was the main thing.

Ian Rutledge sank back into a blinding light and fell asleep.

And woke, blinking in the sun. He put up a hand to shield his eyes and sat up.

All around him rolling green hills stretched away to the horizon. He sat in long grass dotted with bright red flowers. White butterflies, no bigger than the tip of his finger, flickered from blossom to blossom, so many that the fields sparkled with the movement of tiny wings. The sky was a perfect blue from edge to edge, without a cloud in sight. A warm breeze ruffled through his hair and he smoothed it back with a distracted hand. He felt he should be more disturbed, waking up in a field without the slightest notion of how he got there, but there was a peace to the land about him that calmed his thoughts. And yet – and yet there was something wrong with the pastoral tranquility about him. Something missing that he couldn't quite put his finger on . . .

“There's no trees, ye ken.”

He turned his head and saw a man sitting beside him. He was prepared to swear that he couldn't have missed another human being among the grass and the flitting butterflies, but the evidence of his eyes was irrefutable. “I'm sorry?” he said, more out of surprise than misunderstanding the man's words.

The man swept a hand out before them, taking in the sky and the hills with their waving grasses. “The trees take longer to grow back. They'll not be having apples or pears any time soon.”

The man stood and he scrambled to his feet as well, not wanting to appear rude. “You're right. I would expect trees to mark the edges of the fields.” As he spoke he noticed something else about the place, an unsettling fall of shadows. The land looked wrinkled, a blanket not yet smoothed from a disturbed night's dream. He turned back to the man and held out a hand. “I'm Inspector – that is, Ian Rutledge.” It had been six years since he retired from the Yard and yet he could not quite break the habit of giving his rank first.

Rutledge could see, now that he was looking properly, that the young man was a soldier, dressed in the khaki tunic and puttees that the infantry wore. A flicker of unease made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up but the soldier took his hand with a smile. “Aye, sir,” the soldier said. Even without hearing his voice, surprisingly deep for one so young, Rutledge would have taken him for a Scot. Something about the set of his face marked him even more than the black handle of the small knife protruding from the strips wrapped on his leg. The soldiers under his command had taught him to use the skein dubh and he had been both grateful and proud that they had shared the tradition with him.

The wind seemed colder, the sun retreating behind a cloud. “I – forgive me, but have we met?” Rutledge asked, releasing the man's hand.

The soldier's face altered briefly, an emotion deeply felt but too swift to identify chasing over his visage like the clouds racing past the sun. “Possibly not,” he replied, his voice even. “I thought ye may be in need of a guide.”

“Am I going somewhere?” Rutledge looked up at the sky that increasingly looked like rain. 'We might need cover soon,' he thought and then said as much out loud.

“Aye, but it's nae sae verra' far.” The soldier picked up the pack at his feet and slung it around his back with the ease of long practice. Thunder muttered in the distance and Rutledge shivered again. “In a way, you ha' never left,” the soldier said quietly. Rutledge was not sure he had heard correctly because he didn't understand the comment.

The soldier set off in the long marching stride that ate the miles and Rutledge followed after, easily matching the pace. The butterflies flickered around their feet and legs, rising ahead of their passage in clouds and settling to either side calmly. The air was decidedly cooler.

They came to the first of those odd folds in the landscape, a precipitous drop into a long, narrow ditch overgrown with grass and violets, pimpernel and poppies. He stumbled to a halt and the breath went out of his lungs. “What -?” It was just an exclamation of surprise. He knew what it was.

The soldier jumped down into the trench before Rutledge could stop him. He looked back up at Rutledge. “We ha' to go this way now,” the soldier said, almost gently.

“I don't want to.” It was childishly simple and helplessly honest. He was ashamed and defiant in equal measure. The soldier cocked his head, waiting. “I'm afraid,” Rutledge said miserably.

“But ye are no' a coward,” the soldier said.

Rutledge shook his head. “You don't know,” he began and stopped. He couldn't say that to a soldier standing in a trench. He could only be more honest. “You don't know me.”

The soldier frowned a bit. “We canna stay here, ye ken,” he said. “It will rain soon.”

They stood in silence, listening to the distant thunder that had become more constant. It had started to sound like something else. Rutledge could feel it getting closer. He wanted to wrap his head in his arms, he wanted to turn his back on the trench and the soldier and the sound of the past coming closer, he wanted to run.

He could not run.

He would never run.

The soldier waited at the bottom of the trench.

A patter of raindrops fell about Rutledge, bending the grasses, trampling the flowers. He took a deep breath and jumped.

He landed in mud that splashed up to his knees. The duckboards had rotted through, contributing splinters to the mess of mud and slops that filled the bottom of the trench. The smell of it rose to meet him, mud and cordite, gunpowder from the spent rounds, unwashed bodies and overwhelming fear. It was enough to drive him to his knees, though he of course would not succumb to that impulse. The wool of his trousers would never dry.

The soldier smiled slightly, a hint of vindication in his expression, and waved a hand. “This way, sir,” he said.

They moved along the trench, Rutledge following in the instinctive half-crouch that hid his height. He tried not to think about where he was going, but the fact that he didn't know weighed even heavier. He wished for a map, for orders, for more information about what was happening. The guns spoke of a push coming, but he knew nothing of it.

'I will not send them to die.' The thought ambushed him with the force of a heart attack. He stopped in the trench and the men behind him stopped as well, muttering and shifting. Before him, the soldier turned with an inquisitive look “We are not going over the top,” Rutledge said, raising his voice as the guns spoke to try and drown out his words. Behind him, the men fell silent.

The soldier shifted his gun on his shoulder. “There are orders,” he said reasonably.

“No,” Rutledge replied, feeling the panic rise in his throat. The mud walls closed around him, the top of the trench tumbling out of the sky onto his head. “There are no orders. I have not received any orders.” He turned to the line of men along the trench, their eyes white and wide in pale faces. “Stand down,” he said, the snap of command in his voice as it had not been in years. He could raise his voice to be heard even over the guns. “Stand down!”

The soldier was at his shoulder, the Scots burr loud in his ear. “There is a war on, ye ken.”

“No,” Rutledge said, but the word was lost in the big guns speaking chaos at the sky. “No,” he said again, feeling like a madman but unable to stay silent. Machine gun fire stitched along the parapet, making the men duck and flinch. Rutledge drew himself up to his full height, shaking off the soldier who caught his arm with a cry of alarm. “Stand down,” Rutledge roared, scrapping his throat raw with the power of his scream. “The war is over! Stand down!”

Silence fell like the wrath of God.

Rutledge stood stunned in the quiet. His breath rattled in his throat. The silence stung in his ears.

'Gentle God. _Can it be so simple?_ '

On the heels of that thought came the first cry of pain.

Some of the men cried out reflexively, echoing the pain helplessly. Heads turned as if they were on a swivel, drawn to the sound. Some started toward the fire step instinctively. “Caught in the wire,” someone said hoarsely and a ripple of unease flowed down the ranks.

Rutledge looked around and found a crudely built ladder behind him. He put it up against the parapet and checked to see that he had his wire cutters hanging from his belt. As he put his foot on the first rung of the ladder, he felt rather than saw the surge behind him as the men moved into position to follow. “Stay here,” he ordered and hauled himself over the top.

The land over the trench was battered beyond recognition, bare of trees and grass and flowers. The rain came harder and he peered though it, setting his hat more firmly on his head to keep his line of sight clear. There was a body in the wires, hanging off the St. Andrew's cross of posts. Rutledge took a step and slithered to his knees, falling into the mud of a shell hole. The water filled his boots, shockingly cold. Mud covered his hands up to the wrists. He recognized the place as Flanders, the great stinking mud hole of Flanders and the filthy sucking muck that drowned men too hurt to haul themselves out of it. Rutledge pulled himself up and began to climb, waiting for the next shell to burst. He could hear the man in the wire sobbing, taking great tearing breaths and trying to call for help that might never come. Had not come, the last time Rutledge had been here. They had heard so many die, just out of reach in the mud and the tangle.

Rutledge fumbled with his wire cutters, waiting for the rush of pain and weakness that would mean a sniper had found him. Nothing happened. It never did. He reached the top of the shell hole and scrambled out. He recognized the man in wire now. It was Williams, the sergeant who died – but that hadn't been here. Williams died at an aide station behind the lines, coughing his lungs out as the blood bubbled through them, his breath coming softer and softer as the life left him. He had smiled before the end, looked into Rutledge's eyes and smiled as if he was forgiving the world this terrible outrage of war. As if he was forgiving Rutledge his sins.

But here Williams was in wire, hanging on its rusted strands like a scarecrow and trying to call for help. The noise he made sounded like a wound to his chest again, and he cried out pitifully as Rutledge tried to lift him. Rutledge brought the cutters against the metal and for a wonder they worked efficiently. He caught Williams as he fell, both of them sprawling as Rutledge lost his footing in the mud. His head connected with one of the posts and for a moment Rutledge saw black spots in his vision. Another pair of hands moved Williams and Rutledge blinked rapidly to clear his sight.

The Scots soldier was giving Williams a drink from his flask, one hand fumbling in his coat for the interior pocket that held a field dressing. Rutledge scrambled over through the mud. “What are you doing here?” he growled, talking the dressing from the soldier and pressing it to the wound on Williams's chest. “Get back to the line.”

“Ye'll be needing help,” the Scots soldier said. Now there were other cries around them, calls for stretcher-bearers, calls for water, for God and country and mother. Rutledge looked around wildly. There seemed to be a voice in every shell hole. 'How will I get to them all?' The mud pulled at his legs, his sodden boots and trousers. It promised the oblivion of drowning. A brief cold and dark descent and then – nothing.

The Scots soldier frowned at him. “What will ye do?” he asked quietly.

Rutledge stared at him, trying to wrap his mind around the question. The mud grasped at him as he struggled to his feet. “Can you get Williams back to the line?” Rutledge realized that the soldier was missing something. “Where is your rifle, man? You're not armed.”

“Neither are ye, sir.” Rutledge felt on his hip and found his holster was indeed empty. “Ye told us to stand down,” the Scots soldier said.

Rutledge shook his head, too fuddled to argue and feeling he was really in no position to press the debate with his own sidearm missing. “Just get Williams back to the line. Keep your head down.” He scrambled past the X of the fence posts and cut through the next line of wire. The cutters, normally painfully slow to gnaw through the wire, worked well and the coils sprang apart before him. Rutledge skidded down the steep side of a shell hole, nearly on his backside, and found another familiar face at the bottom of it. The soldier sitting in the mud with his back to the side of the hole lifted a ruined hand towards him, blood still flowing freely from his amputated fingers. “Sir,” he said, breathless from the pain. “My hand -”

“I see it,” Rutledge said grimly. “What on earth have you been playing at, Baylor?”

The boy shook his head. He said he was eighteen but Rutledge suspected him of being much younger, perhaps as young as fourteen. Tall for his age, true, but like a lanky colt, all legs and startled looks. His helmet was gone and his fair hair had been plastered to his head with rain and sweat. “Don't know, sir,” Baylor said, sounding bewildered more than frightened. “My hand hurts.” He looked at the place where his right forefinger and thumb had been, trying to connect the mangle of blood and bone to his pain.

Rutledge knelt in the mud beside him and pulled the field dressing from Baylor's coat with an efficient flourish that, against all odds, drew a smile from the stricken boy. “We're going to need to wrap that, I'm afraid,” Rutledge said calmly. “It might sting a bit. Ready?”

“Yes, sir.” Baylor watched with interest as Rutledge folded the clean fabric around what was left of his hand and secured it with the long ties. “Thank you, sir,” he said contentedly and his eyes rolled back into his head, his face fell slack, and he slumped back into the mud.

Rutledge took a deep breath and pressed his fingers against Baylor's neck, searching for a pulse. It beat strong and steady under his fingers. And that was welcome but wrong. But this all was wrong. The boy had died on a stretcher, alive and thanking him one moment and dead the next, his last words a polite nonsense to a man who could not save him. But it had been on a stretcher in the trench, not alone in a shell hole. Rutledge was sure of it. And the pulse beneath his fingertips confirmed it. Baylor had not died, merely fainted.

Rutledge stared at the slumped boy, breath hitching, feeling the strong and steady pulse under his fingertips. Baylor had died. Baylor was alive under his hand. It was impossible and he was baffled and grateful and hopelessly overwhelmed.

Over the edge of the shell hole, he could hear more men screaming and moaning, more that perhaps he could save. But Baylor could die without someone to attend to him. He couldn't leave and yet he couldn't let those other soldiers die alone out in the mud.

“I'll see to him, sir,” Williams said at his elbow. Rutledge looked at him with disbelief.

“You were shot,” Rutledge said, the first words that came to his mind.

Williams looked down at the field dressing wrapped around his chest. Blood had soaked the fabric of it, making a red badge in the torn remains of his khaki coat. “Yes, sir,” he said, rather cheerfully, “but I don't think it will slow me down much. You get on and we'll follow after you when this lad -”

“Baylor,” Rutledge supplied. Of course, Williams hadn't met Baylor. Baylor had died before Williams had joined the regiment

“When Baylor here is back on his feet,” Williams said, sitting down beside the boy. Baylor stirred a bit but did not open his eyes. “Once he's had a bit of rest, he'll be right as rain, I expect. I know it did me the world of good, sir.”

Rutledge found he could say nothing to that and simply nodded. “Carry on, then,” he said automatically, the officer's response to troops who had decided on a reasonable course of action for themselves. He dug a toe into the mud and hoisted himself out of the shell hole. A hand reached down to help him and he took it, looking up without surprise at the Scots soldier. “Thank you,” Rutledge said and looked back. Williams was giving Baylor some water from his flask. “They died,” he said calmly. “I saw them both die.”

“Just because ye witnessed it does nae make ye responsible for it,” the Scots soldier said.

“If I had gotten to them sooner.” Rutledge rubbed his hand over his face, trying to wipe the mud away with a muddy hand. He gave up and used his sleeve instead. “The first time, I mean. The other time. When they died.” He shook his head. “Do I know you?” The Scots soldier watched him impassively, that special blank stare that all the corporals perfected, that gave away nothing and promised nothing. “I should, shouldn't I?'

“I canna say what ye should or should no' ken,” the Scots soldier said. “But it looks as if those lads are well.” Williams, glancing up, gave them a little wave that was part salute and part cheeky dismissal. “There are others that need the help.”

“Of course,” Rutledge said, turning his back on the shell hole. “I don't suppose there's any point in telling you to get back behind the lines.”

The Scots soldier smiled for the first time. It made him look unbearably young. Not young in the sense that Baylor was underaged but innocent, somehow. Vulnerable. “There is not, sir. But ye can say it, if it'll help ease your mind.”

Rutledge found himself smiling back. It was as natural as breathing to him. “I don't think it will, but I appreciate the offer. Do you have your field dressing still?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Good.” The low chorus of pain beat at him and he looked over the field grimly. “Let's see who's out here.”

There was Anderson, for one, looking at the place where his leg had been and too shocked to even swear at Rutledge when he nearly fell on top of him in the mud. They hadn't found Anderson for three days, and the rats had been at him, in the experience that Rutledge thought of as the other time. He had been completely and mercifully dead when they had chased the rats from what was left of his face. This time Anderson stared at them and then down at his knee cap glinting in the mud and blood of his ruined leg.

"I can't move me leg," Anderson said. There was a sort of baffled discontent in his voice as if he were considering an angry letter to the editor regarding the state of his leg. "What is this world coming to?"

"I'm sure I don't know." Rutledge shuffled his coat around and found his field dressing "I don't think you'll be getting up any time soon. Can you keep your head down?"

"I think so," Anderson said and added the sir only when the Scots soldier gave him a hard look. They pulled the dressing tight around the stump of Anderson's leg, covering the mess of blood and bone in dirty white linen. Anderson rallied a bit. "There are eight or nine of our lads in the wire, to the north. Those bloody machine guns have pinned them down."

"Right." Rutledge listened, taking in the silence beyond the weary moan of the battlefield. "I think there's a cease-fire for the moment. We'll do what we can. Are you all right here?"

"Where the hell would I be going? Sir." Anderson hitched himself up into a sitting position. His breath caught and he had to sit and breathe for a moment before speaking. "Go on. I'll be fine. "

Rutledge met the eyes of the Scots corporal over Anderson's head. "I believe you," he said slowly and found that he did indeed believe that Anderson would be better. He still wasn't exactly sure what was going on but he had seen men who were dead, whom he had seen die, and who were now alive. Moving was better than sitting still and thinking about it. And so Rutledge moved. "After you, Corporal."

The Scots corporal gave him a little salute with an edge of humor to it, and scrambled up over the edge of the shell hole. As he left the hole, another soldier slithered down into it. Rutledge was not surprised to see it was Williams, looking even more cheerful. His face was clean and he didn't quite grin at Rutledge. "Baylor will be along in a moment, sir," Williams said. "He stopped to help one of the Yanks. "

"Very well," Rutledge. "Take care of Anderson.”

"I don't need anyone to nursemaid me," Anderson said as Rutledge clambered up the side of the shell hole. "Get off with you."

"If you don't want a drink, don't have one," Williams said.

Rutledge found he was smiling. He hadn't had much cause to smile when he had been here last. The other time the fields were all full of dead men, the ones he couldn't get to, the ones he heard or saw die. But here, wherever here was, they seemed to be alive again. And he was getting to them. They were wounded, to be sure. Baylor would lose that hand and maybe the arm. Anderson would be crippled. There was always the chance that gangrene and typhus and the other diseases of the hospitals would carry them off. But he had gotten there first, before they died. It was something. At least, he could try to see them before they went. He'd have to organize stretcher-bearers for Anderson. Cheerful or not, Williams couldn't lift him with that chest wound. How he was moving at all . . .

A hand erupted out of the mud to clutch at his ankle and Rutledge yelled in surprise as he fell. For a moment, there was a shocked silence around him, as if the wounded were offended by the only able-bodied man in the field having the temerity to voice a complaint. Rutledge scrambled back and stared in astonishment as the hand sticking out of the mud waved around, looking for something to grasp again. And then he crawled forward and clasped the hand, feeling it warm and real in his own. There was nothing to brace against to pull the man out of the mud but Rutledge struggled to his knees, pulling with both hands. The arm came free up to the elbow and Rutledge flung himself forward, locking his own arm under the newly freed elbow and bending the arm around his own to hold it tight as he pulled. The man's shoulder came to the surface of the mud and then the side of his head. He wailed as his face left the dirt. He was so covered in the clinging black sludge that Rutledge couldn't recognize him at all.

The Scots corporal arrived beside him, tearing a strip from his field dressing even as he slid to his knees. "Your bottle, sir," he said and Rutledge handed over the water, thankful it was full by the feel of it. They never had enough water on the front and every drop counted. The Scots corporal began wiping the man's face, clearing his eyes gently and pouring the water over them.

Rutledge sat back and watched him, beginning to shake. He had been that man once, pulled out of the mud where he had been buried by an errant shell. It had been the worst moment of his life, in a life that had included murders and the darkest aspects of police work, a long life of lonely and constant vigil over himself. But still. The worst moment, when he had not died in the mud. The moment when everything changed and nothing was ever right again.

"He will live," the Scots soldier said quietly, "as ye lived."

"He won't want to." Rutledge tried to stop talking but it seemed that he had more to say. "I won't wish that on anyone. Not to live as I have."

The Scots soldier turned impassive eyes on him, eyes the color of the faded heather when autumn was upon it. "It's better than dying, ye ken."

"No, I don't know that." Abruptly he was angry, furious with himself and with this calm nemesis who seemed to be leading him deeper into the nightmare. “I don't know anything of the sort. I was trapped like that and now I can't go into train cars, I can't stay in a room without a window. I can't breathe with too many people about me. " His breath hitched. “The most ridiculous things send me into fits of rage or panic and I can't control them. I've never been fit for anyone to live with and so I lived alone. Do you understand that? I've lived alone." He stopped, throat raw, and the silence was deafening. "I would have been better off dead."

There was sorrow in the eyes of the Scots soldier and for a moment Rutledge hated him for it. "Ye need not have been," the soldier said.

Rutledge stood and marched away, his strides stiff with anger and his fists clenched to white knots at his side. He walked blindly out over the ruined field of battle, past men who cried out to him and past some who were beyond crying, who simply watched him with bright and compassionate eyes. He didn't want their compassion. He didn't deserve it, least of all here. And the rain came down harder upon him until he could not see his way at all.

Inevitably he fell, sprawling out into the mud and laying there. The cold seeped into his body from his cheek to his feet, all pressed into the mud, and the rain pounded all along his back. He closed the eye that looked up against it but did nothing else to shield himself from the onslaught. Eventually it would wash him into the mud, bury him and drown him. Eventually it would end.

Ian Rutledge lay in the mud for a length of time that he could not calculate. He had always prided himself on knowing the time, on being able to count his own heartbeats to mark the passage of minutes when he couldn't see the sun or the stars, when it was too dark for a torch or even a match in the trenches to read his watch. He could time the universe by the clock in his chest. But now the clock had wound down and there was no time to be counted. 'Perhaps this will be my eternity,' Rutledge thought, the cold making even that thought seem languid and unimportant. 'Maybe I am dead already.'

'Maybe I have always been dead and everything else was a dream.'

The rain no longer pounded on his head or back. He blinked open his eyes and something glared back at him. The world was crystal white and cold beyond measure.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, shaking his head like a dog and sending the snow flying. As far as the eye could see, there was trackless white. A few ragged ends of wire stood out blackly, tufted with snowflakes along their barbs. He couldn't see another soul, living or dead.

But he could hear them.

Far away he could hear the men singing. He recognized the tune, Aul Lang Syne. The Scots soldiers under his command had sung it often enough. They celebrated their own new year and sometimes he was the first footer, a tall dark-haired man to make the first toast of the new year and bring luck to the house. Except it had often been a tent or simply a hole in the ground that he tried to bring luck to. And often, there was no luck to be had.

They were out there somewhere in the snow. His men, the ones he had tried to save. They had counted on him to save them.

He staggering to his feet, turning his face to the wind and then away from it, trying to judge the direction of the singing. The tune rose and fell, monotonous as a monk's chant.

A line of black appeared on the horizon and Rutledge stumbled towards it. His legs were numb, making him clumsy, and he could barely feel his face. The signing grew louder and through the blizzard he could see a line of men moving along a track made muddy by the passage of many feet, a dark line in the landscape. The trench unfolded around him and he staggered to the road. They were not singing the old carol but the new one that had always been a complaint and a plea at once. "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here," they sang, over and over as they marched, the old song of friendship and hope and camaraderie reduced to an idiot's tale, signifying nothing. "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

"Company halt," Rutledge cried and they came obediently to a halt. "What's the meaning of this?"

The corporal in charge turned and of course it was the Scots corporal with his warm brown eyes. "New orders, sir. We're moving up."

"No, that can't be right. The war is over." But there was a muttering in the distance, muffled by the snow. That was the worst thing about the snow, not its killing cold but the way it tricked the eye and ear. The way it played their senses against them and made danger invisible, undetectable. Rutledge looked and listened but couldn't tell if it was guns, whose guns, or just thunder. "The war is over," he said again firmly, hoping for another miracle. And then in desperation, "Even if it's not, there are no orders to move up."

"Beggin' your pardon sir," said another soldier and he recognized Anderson, of all people, on crutches and in the front lines. The sight made him want to weep. "We have to go. They need us. "

"No one needs to die," Rutledge said desperately. “No one needs to die anymore." The Scots corporal looked a question at him and he flushed. "Not even me," he said quietly. "I missed my chance."

"Well, that's bollocks," Anderson said flatly.

"Here, none of that," the Scots corporal said, "No talking in the ranks.

Anderson muttered something that might have been bollocks again, or something less complimentary, and there was silence once more. "What would ye have us do then?" the Scots corporal said. Rutledge stared at him. "What are your orders, sir?"

"My orders." He remembered opening orders, the little pieces of paper that ended lives, held in his trembling hands. His hands were empty now, and all the expectant faces turned towards him made him cringe. The snow had stopped falling and the air was crisp and clear. Rutledge could see all their faces so clearly. He knew them all, the names crowded into his mind. The men stood patient in the cold air and waited on him. And he didn't know what to say.

“The war is over,” Rutledge said finally. “You are mustered out. There are transports waiting to take you home.” He hoped it was true.

But the men didn't move. “All of us, sir?” That was Baylor, the young voice carrying. A murmur of inquiry and agreement rippled out from the question.

“Yes,” Rutledge said, although they hadn't gone home. Baylor lay in one of the small graveyards in the mud of France. At least he had a marker, though it had only been a wooden cross with his name inked on it. The damp would rot the wood, the tide of war would roll over the churchyard. He might not have any marker at all now. So many didn't. They had piled the corpses in trenches, covered them over, and moved on. “Yes, all of you,” Rutledge said, wanting it to be true. “Help the wounded. Keep together. The armistice will hold.” He ran out of words and ground into silence.

Still they didn't move. “We dinnae know the way,” the Scots corporal said very quietly. Almost gently. “Ye must lead the way, sir.”

Rutledge's breath went out of him in a harsh laugh. “I don't know either,” he said, exasperated under his panic. He steadied himself. He could not abandon them and retreat into his own despair. Not with safety so close. “Collect anyone you can see,” Rutledge said briskly. “You are all going home if I can help it. Stretcher-bearers?” A few 'sirs' replied to his call. “Be ready to carry those who cannot walk.” Rutledge looked around, the snow and clouds making it difficult to tell which direction he was facing, and finally decided more or less at random. “We're going northwest, to Calais.”

An excited whisper ran through the ranks, stilled when the Scots corporal bellowed at them. Rutledge gave him the nod and they set off, a dozen voices calling cadence and the tramp of boots shaking the earth. The rhythm of the march fell apart almost immediately as men broke ranks to answer the calls of other men wounded in the fields. Rutledge found Sergeant Bailey, pulling him out of a shell hole and almost embracing the man. They had never found his body in that other time and it had been the first weight on his, Rutledge's, soul. Seeing Bailey made him realize how many they were recovering. When he stopped by the road to look, their lines stretched to the horizons in both directions. 'How many did we leave behind?' he thought with a kind of wonder.

The snow turned to mud under their boots, then melted away entirely leaving the land raw and brown and black. Rutledge saw Fulton, the first man he had lost, marching along with what was left of his face turned up to the sun. Graham and one of the many Douglas lads carried Ramsey between them, walking steadily as if they could carry the bigger man forever and wouldn't mind doing so. Rutledge saw Barnes, the best shot in their unit, his hands looking empty without his gun in them, and their young piper Macrea, who smiled at him as if delighted to see the man who had led him over the top of the trench to his death. The line went on, face after face he could put a name to, face after face he thought he had left behind in the mud and death of the trenches of France. The march became less ranks of men and more a group of people walking in the sun. Someone started singing and a thousand voices took up the chorus.

Mademoiselle from Armentieres  
Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres  
Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

She hasn't been kissed for forty years

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Rutledge found himself smiling. He was taking them home. All of them. Their voices echoed against the sky. He stepped back into the march that was more of a ramble, alert to any voices that might come from the rapidly thawing fields around them, and hummed along with the song.

  
Oh Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

You didn't have to know her long

To know the reason men go wrong

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Eventually he stepped off the road to let a group of men who had been blinded by gas shuffle past, their hands on each other shoulders. MacTavish, who they used to call the preacher behind his back because of his encyclopedic knowledge of and willingness to recite Bible verses, had an arm linked through the arm of the lead man in that little train. Rutledge was amused to note he was singing with the rest, although the song had turned somewhat risque.

  
Oh Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

She's the hardest working girl in town

But she makes her living upside down

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Oh Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

She'll do it for wine she'll do it for rum

And sometimes for chocolate or chewing gum

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

The Scots corporal stopped beside him, a comfortable presence at his right hand. They watched the parade for a moment, the men on crutches, men in wheelbarrows procured from who knows where, men carrying their comrades on their backs and still singing.

“I didn't do this the first time,” Rutledge said conversationally. “They all died.”

“Ye would ha', had ye been given the chance.”

“Of course. But I didn't.”

The Scots corporal shook his head and laughed. “It's happening now, man. Can ye no' be grateful?”

Rutledge turned to face him. “I am. I am more grateful than I can say,” he said sincerely. “But I have spent my life trying to hold back madness. If this is only in my mind – I don't know anymore. I promised myself I wouldn't let it come to this.” He had never said so much to anyone before, not even in the darkest days at the clinic when he had broken before Dr. Flemming and confessed his guilt and his ghosts. He had never spoken of his determination to live in his right mind or not at all.

The men passed before them, singing as they went, even the ones being carried or walking blind. The high spirits of it reminded Rutledge of marching off to war, when they had been so sure that it would be over by Christmas. So young and confident and bloody sure it would be easily done. So perfectly stupid and wrong.

“Ye'll be joining the line now,” the Scots corporal said. It was not quite a question and he didn't look ready to move, standing with his arms easy at his sides. He still didn't have his gun. Rutledge found that he was worried about that. The guns would have to be accounted for. He didn't want their departure delayed for one second on account of a paper work error.

The corporal was regarding him gravely now, a listening look on his face that was achingly familiar. “Ye keep saying 'you',” he said, pronouncing the word carefully.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You will be going home,” the corporal said, his tone making it clear he was quoting Rutledge's earlier words. “Are ye not coming with us, then?” He said it with a smile but his eyes were wary.

Rutledge opened his suddenly dry mouth and found he had no answer for that. He faced away from the corporal, towards the lines of marching men. Pipes skirled in the distance and someone had found a drum to keep time with the jaunty song. The mademoiselle was descending into a kind of jolly depravity that ordinarily he would have stepped in to stop but he couldn't find it in himself to tell the men to mind their words, not when he couldn't find his own words.

  
Oh Mademoiselle from Aix-Les-Bains

Parlez-vous

Oh Mademoiselle from Aix-Les-Bains

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Aix-Les-Bains

She gave the Yankees shooting pains

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Oh Mademoiselle from Montparnasse

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Montparnasse

Parlez-vous

As soon as she'd spy a Colonel's brass

She'd take off her skirt and roll in the grass

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

“I have a duty to keep them safe,” Rutledge said finally.

“Ye ha' a duty to yoursel'.” The soft Scots voice just at his shoulder made Rutledge's stomach turn over. “All your life ye ha' done your duty, and done it well. Now ye must be true to the past if ye wish to have a future.”

Rutledge shook his head. “I don't know what you mean,” he said but he was afraid that he did.

The sun had risen high in the sky, banishing clouds and snow together. Grass waved in the gentle breeze, releasing the fresh springtime scent as it was crushed under foot. The men sang as they marched, laughed and waved. Rutledge made himself smile when they turned their happy faces to him, forced up a hand to acknowledge the salutes and occasional waves or even exuberant obscene gestures that seemed to have no real ill will behind them. He wouldn't take this moment of freedom from them.

There was the old platoon, Bates and Arnold and all the rest. Except one, of course.

Rutledge smiled and smiled, scanning the faces as they went past. He knew them, or he did not, but he didn't seen the one that should have been there. The one he dreaded and searched for all the harder. The one he could never see because -

“I had hoped to spare us this. But we come to it at last.”

The face he was looking for was where it always was. Behind him, at his shoulder.

Darkness fell around him as abruptly as if the sun had been shot from the sky. Rutledge stood frozen in the blackness, hearing his heart pound in his ears and his breath go whistling through his lungs.

He had sworn that when he saw Hamish MacLeod again, he would shoot himself. That when the delusions became real, he would end his life rather than descend to that madness and disgrace that shell shock would bring to him. Rutledge fumbled at his hip but his holster had disappeared. He would have to find some other way.

From behind him came the flare of a match smelling of sulfur and then a clatter of glass. Light bloomed and he could see the bare dirt walls around him, the ceiling close over head, and of course he knew where they were. Where they had to be.

The night before MacLeod had been shot, Rutledge had sat in this room, the air still and dank, a kerosene lamp burning on the table between them, and listened while MacLeod had poured out his hopes, the things he had wanted to do, the plans he had made – all his life emptied out onto a rickety rigged table in front of his commanding officer. His friend. His executioner.

A chair scrapped the floor behind him. “Will ye no' sit, sir?”

Something like a sob broke free in Rutledge's chest.

“I need your help,” the implacable voice went on.” I dinnae know who else can help me.”

“I can't.” The words were wrenched form him. “I can't do this again.

Humming silence descended in the room. That was wrong – it had never been silent. MacLeod had talked the whole night through, until his voice was just a whisper. There had been so much to say before the dawn had taken his life, and he had been determined to say it.

“Ye must,” Hamish said quietly. “There's been murder done. Ye'll no' turn your back on it. Else you're no' the policeman I thought ye were.”

The edge of humor made him turn more than anything else. Rutledge looked across the table and the lamplight and all the years that had gone since, and saw Hamish MacLeod, corporal, brother in arms.

But he was not as he had been that other time, pale and shaking, frantic with the words he wouldn't have time to say. Hamish wasn't even in uniform, wearing instead a woolen shirt and a plaid wrapped about him. He looked as if he had just come in from the fields about his croft, leaning back in his chair comfortably with one hand resting open on the table and the other easy by his side. Hamish had the bare edge of a smile on his mouth, the look that invited an appreciation of wit without asking for an overt reaction. They had known each other so well that a look would suffice to communicate sometimes. There had been no one in world Rutledge trusted or relied on more. If it had not been for the war, they never would have met, the Londoner and the Highlander, the Scotland Yard inspector and the Scots crofter. And yet they had learned to trust each other, learned to read each other's minds almost, in the bewildering chaos of the trenches of the Somme.

And then Hamish MacLeod, his nerves broken by the constant shelling and the useless death all around them, had refused a direct order to attack the enemy. And there had been nothing Ian Rutledge could do to turn away the verdict of death. The dawn had come on, ruthless as the shelling that continued all around them as Rutledge, unable to find a white handkerchief, had pinned an envelope on Hamish's chest as a target for the firing squad. He had given the order to fire through numb lips, hoping the men might not hear it.

But they had.

The thought of shooting one of their own had so unnerved them that Hamish had fallen to the ground, wounded but not dead, and Rutledge himself fired the mercy shot that took his life. And then a shell – one of their own, he found out later, an accident of targeting that made it fall far short – had covered them all with the mud of the war, burying Rutledge under Hamish's dead body for hours. He was one of the few that survived. He had carried Hamish MacLeod with him, a disembodied voice that spoke of his fears and his cowardice and his murdering hypocrisy every day he had lived after that.

Rutledge held the back of the other chair to steady himself. The raw wood drove splinters into his hands but he knew if he let go he would fall, so he took the pain and did not let go. All the years he had waited for Hamish's face to appear in the reflection in a window, or in the mirrors of his car, behind his shoulder as he shaved in the morning. Rutledge wanted to deny that any of this was happening. He wanted to rush across and embrace the man, to prove that he was a real person and not just the last shred of Rutledge's mind turning on him.

In the end he did what he thought was necessary. “I accept that I murdered you,” he said. “The facts are clear.”

“Aye, the who and the how are known,” Hamish agreed. “But there's more to it than that.”

Rutledge forced his hands to relax on the chair back. He realized in a distracted way that he wasn't in uniform either. He was wearing one of the tweed suits that had gone out of fashion just after he retired from the force. A starched collar scrapped at his chin. He was Inspector Rutledge again, back from the war and clinging to his work in the Yard to keep him from the nightmares of his waking mind. And finding himself irritated at a civilian questioning his analysis of the evidence. “A judge wouldn't need any more than that,” he snapped.

Hamish raised an eyebrow at him. “Then he would no' be a good judge,” he said. “There's the motive, ye ken. The why of the affair.”

“You've told me why every day. Do you want me to say it? I'm a coward. If I had been a better man -”

“If ye were a coward, ye would ha' been a lawyer, as your father wanted ye to be,” Hamish said, raising his own voice to cut across Rutledge's shout.

“You will kindly leave my family out of this,” Rutledge said sharply.

Hamish nodded once, eyes flashing in the flame. “A coward would no' have gone back to the police force.”

“I ran there to hide from myself,” Rutledge said and blinked in amazement at his own candor. But Hamish knew that. Hamish had accused him of it often enough.

“Ye went to Scotland Yard firstly because it was the best thing to do with your life.” The chair clattered backward to the floor as Hamish stood. “Ye went back for the same reason.”

“I went back because I had no where else to go.”

“Ye could ha' stayed hidden. Your fortune would ha' carried ye, and an officer's pension.”

And that was true enough. Both he and Frances could have lived perfectly respectable and comfortable, if somewhat retiring, lives on their inheritance. “I wasn't wounded,” Rutledge pointed out coldly. “Not physically, not in a way that would be accepted. Everyone would know – or guess.”

“Show your scars, man. There are more than enough to retire on.” Hamish dismissed the argument with a disdainful wave of the hand. “Verra' well, then. Ye could write your memoirs or a learned book. Ye went to Oxford. Tell the truth about the war.” Rutledge flinched in spite of himself. “Or dig ditches. We know well enough how to do that.” That hint of a smile graced his face again, though his eyes were still angry. “There were a muckle of places to go to ground.”

“I needed to work,” Rutledge said and took a deep breath as something else occurred to him. “I wanted to work.”

“Aye.” Hamish reached down and put the chair back on its legs. He sat down again, all the anger gone. “Ye wanted the work that made best use of ye. A coward wants only to hide away and not be found.”

Rutledge stared at him for a long moment. Then he pried his fingers off the chair and sat down in it. “It was cowardly to shoot you,” he said. “I should have found another way.”

Hamish looked at his hands, folded on the table before him. “I wish ye had,” he said. Rutledge was surprised into a painful laugh by the blandness of the tone. Hamish glanced up at him. “I will no' say that I dinnae mourn my life, ye ken. The life that would ha' been mine. We had plans, Fiona and I.”

The soft voice cut at his heart and Rutledge swallowed hard. “She never married,” he said, his voice coming more harshly than he meant it to. “I tried to see she was taken care of – I offered-” Hamish looked up at him and Rutledge flushed, shamed again by the stark surprise on the man's face. “She wouldn't have me. Not even for the boy's sake.”

“What boy?” Hamish stared at him with wide eyes and Rutledge found himself explaining the terrible chain of events that led to Fiona MacDonald taking in the illegitimate son of Rutledge's friend and god-brother Ross Trevor, and then being accused of murdering the boy's mother to keep him. It had been an ugly incident, nearly costing Fiona her freedom and Rutledge his life in a final confrontation with the murderer. Fortunately, as far as Rutledge could tell, young Ian remembered very little of it. He had only been six at the time.

After he fell silent, his mouth dry from talking so long, Hamish turned up the flame on the lamp. His eyes glittered in the new light. “What -” Hamish cleared his throat and tried again. “What did she name the boy?”

He had not expected that question. Answering it was almost as difficult as telling the story that went before. “Ian. Ian Hamish.” Rutledge took a deep breath. “He is my godson.”

Hamish smiled. He could have been any young man, thinking a pleasant thought of the girl he loved. “Ian Hamish Trevor. Aye, that's a braw name.” His voice was wistful.

Rutledge bit his lip but the words would not be denied. “Ian Hamish MacLeod. She told everyone you and she had married secretly.” The smile fell away from Hamish's face and he shut his eyes. Rutledge wanted to stop talking and couldn't. “Ross's father took them in but the boy – Ian had already been baptized with that name. We told him his father had died in the war.”

Hamish sat in silence for a moment, eyes still closed. “Well. That's true enough.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Did ye tell Fiona what ha' become of me?” he asked.

The big guns sounded abruptly, closer to them and shaking the earth around them. Dirt rattled down from the roof onto the table between them. “I couldn't tell her I killed you,” Rutledge said. “How could I say that to her? She had named the boy Ian.”

“Did ye tell her I died a mutineer?” Hamish looked at his hands resting on the table as if he couldn't stand to look across at the man sitting opposite him.

“No.” Rutledge shook his head, feeling that he was inching out over the abyss. “No, of course not. What good would that have done?”

“It would be the truth.”

“The truth -” Rutledge took a moment to collect his thoughts and rein in his voice. “The truth? The truth is that you were right. We should not have sent men out to die again and again to no purpose. It was unjust and -” he searched for the right word to condemn that decision “- and stupid. Criminally stupid.”

“Ye had orders.”

“I should have disobeyed them,” Rutledge said bleakly.

“Aye,” Hamish said, “but could ye ha' done so? All the lads looking to ye to be their commander, looking to ye to see them safe.”

Rutledge sat back in his chair and shut his burning eyes for a moment. “I should have found another way,” he said again and then tried to change the subject. “You'll forgive me if I find it hard to believe you would want me exonerated, since you've haunted me all these years.”

When he opened his eyes, Hamish was regarding him quizzically. “I have no' haunted anyone,” he said. “And why would I choose to haunt ye? If I could see Fiona,” his voice trailed away.

The words touched Rutledge to the quick. He was prepared to admit his own guilt but he would not have Hamish denying his part. “To tell me how I had failed you,” Rutledge said, his voice rising again, angry and ashamed and grieving. “To make damn sure I remembered, very second of my life, that I lived and you died. You and Baylor and Anderson and Williams. You all died.” He slammed his hand on the table, feeling the splinters from the back of the chair drive deeper into his skin. “God damn it, why did I live when you all died?”

Hamish looked shocked by his outburst and Rutledge found a bizarre impulse to apologize for his language rising in his throat. Before he could say anything more, the Scotsman stood. “Do ye think I would be so cruel as that?” he asked coldly. “I respected ye. I wanted my son to carry your name.”

“And I killed you.”

The words hung in the air between them. Rutledge forced himself to look up and meet Hamish's eyes and see whatever condemnation was there. But what he saw instead was a kind of resignation and a white envelope pinned to the plaid where it wrapped over Hamish's shoulders and across his chest.

Rutledge stood slowly, feeling sick as the blood drained away from his face. Hamish followed his stare to the white paper that was bright against the blue and brown weave and then looked back at Rutledge. “It must be dawn,” he said.

The guns fell silent at the words.

Rutledge had that feeling he sometimes had in the watches of the night, that he was the only person alive and nothing around him was real. It had been a relief to see Hamish in those watches, a reminder that at least one other person still survived. But Hamish had the white square on his breast over his heart. Hamish was going to die.

“Not again,” Rutledge said. “Please, not again.”

The door to the bunker stood open and a thin, cold light came through it. Rutledge could hear the guns start like distant and abstract thunder. "I dinnae like to go alone," Hamish said quietly. "Will ye no' go with me?"

Dawn had come up milky grey and silver, giving everything a cold blue tint as if they were moving underwater. The firing squad stood at the ready, but Rutledge could not see their faces. The first time this had happened he had known every man, had seen clearly their unease and their disgust for the job they had been selected to do. But now they were ciphers, nearly faceless in the swimming dawn light.

"Why do ye no' blame them, as ye do yoursel'?" Hamish said, gesturing to the soldiers standing still as statues, rifles over their shoulders at a tireless attention. "They fired the shots."

"At my orders," Rutledge said, too numb with horror to do anything but tell the strictest truth. "They didn't want to shoot."

"And ye did?"

The dry humor in the question made Rutledge want to laugh. He bit his cheek to still the impulse. If he started laughing , he might never stop. He had seen men at the clinic dissolve into hysterical laughter, unable to control themselves as their sanity fragmented. He guarded against laughter and tears with equal zeal, as either could prove the breaking point for his mind. "No," he said harshly, tasting blood in his mouth. "Of course not."

"Ye were only following orders as well," Hamish said, as if he were not standing in front of the guns that would end his life. Had ended his life.

“It's no excuse," Rutledge said. The firing of the guns had gotten louder, the shells falling faster now, and he had to raise his voice to be heard . Soon the moment would come when he would have to order the firing squad to stand to, to take aim. The noise of war filled the sky and it was happening again. Rutledge clapped his hands over his hears, trying to make sense of the moment. "Just let me think a moment,” he said, aware he was begging and knowing he asked for the impossible. "I can find a way out if only I can think."

Even over the cacophony of the guns and his own desperate voice, he heard the crisp movements of the firing squad shouldering their weapons. Taking aim. They were going to kill Hamish again.

“No!" It was an empty cry and Rutledge lurched forward with the lethargy of nightmare, knowing he would be too late. The guns would fire as the shells fell, but the men were shaken by shooting one of their own. They would miss the white mark and Hamish would fall, bleeding, dying but not dead. Rutledge would draw his own side arm and here it was in his hand again, the all too familiar weight dragging his hand away from his face. He would deliver a killing shot point blank into his friend's head. And the misdirected fire would fall upon them and bury them both, the living and the dead together. None of the firing squad would survive. How Rutledge had envied them in their graves.

The rifles clicked. Ready to fire.

Rutledge put the revolver to his temple. This time they would both be dead. Dead and buried with nothing to mark the place where they fell.

Strong hands tore the gun away from his grasp, and Rutledge opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them until that moment, to see Hamish throwing the revolver with all his might. "Are ye mad, man?" The Scotsman had to scream over the rising tide of sound. The shells were falling all around them with monstrous slowness, the whistles turned into drawn out screeches as they drifted down like falling leaves. "That's no' the answer."

"Yes," Rutledge screamed back, his self control crumbling to ash. "I'm mad and I don't deserve to live. I killed you. I should die for that."

"The war killed me," Hamish shouted at him, eye to eye as the bombs fell. Hamish could almost match him for height and they had always seen eye to eye. "I could ha' found another way too, but I could no' think. The noise, all the death. I could no' think." His hands gripped Rutledge's shoulders and he shook his former commander. "I would ne'er ha' betrayed ye like that if I could ha' thought , even for an instant. "

"You were the only one in your right mind," Rutledge said, clasping Hamish's arms and feeling them tremble. "You were the only one who could see how insane it would be to continue."

"It was madness all around," Hamish said. They were holding each other up now, as a tidal wave of mud and debris and all the dirt of war blown into the air by the artillery flowed at them slowly, the way dreams unfold, like the movement of a glacier. The blast from the explosion blew past them, a gale of muck and heat moving like a languid summer breeze. "If we could have stopped it, we would ha', ye ken. But no man could stop it."

"I -" Rutledge looked at him, his friend where no one in their right mind would expect to meet a friend, and spoke the only words that made sense. "I killed you," he said as the sky went black. "I'm so sorry."

Hamish embraced him. "I forgive ye. I betrayed you. I wish I could take that back to mysel'. "

"I forgive you," Rutledge said, holding on to him as the darkness came down. "With all my heart."

There was a choking moment of panic and then nothing.

And then birdsong.

Rutledge sat up with the sun on his face, smelling the green of grass where he had crushed it lying down. From far away there was the tramp of boots and faint singing.

  
Oh Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Where are the girls who used to swarm

About me in my uniform?

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Oh Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentieres

Parlez-vous

You might forget the gas and shell

But you'll nev'r forget the Mademoiselle

Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentières

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentières,

Parlez-vous

Just blow your nose and dry your tears

We’ll all be back in a few short years

Hinky-dinky, parlez-vous.

He sat all the way up and ran his hands through his hair. A chuckle made him look over and see, without surprise, Hamish MacLeod sitting beside him. "Ye look like ye slept in a haystack," the Scotsman said, grinning.

"A little respect for your elders," Rutledge said, smiling back. But he felt like a young man again. Not the twenty that Hamish was but on the right side of thirty anyway, as he had been when he went to war. "Was that -" he couldn't find a word that fit the situation" - real? Any of it?"

"All of it," Hamish said. "I had forgiven ye long since. But ye would no' believe me."

"It wasn't ever you in my head, was it?" Rutledge pulled a blade of grass from its roots and began knotting it, just for something to do with his hands.

“I would no' say such things to ye,” Hamish said indignantly. “Besides, ghosts are heathen things, and no' fit for a good Covenenter.”

It was Rutledge's turn to chuckle. His breath caught and there was something else in his voice besides laughter, something else in his throat and in his eyes. He tried repress the emotion as he always had but then Hamish's hand was on his shoulder, steadying him. And there didn't seem to be any reason to deny it any longer.

Ian Rutledge wept for the wounds he had received and the ones he had given, wept for all the men he had seen go over the top and never return. There were tears for the ones who came back wounded and the ones they never found at all. For his friend Max Hume, who had sent him a letter that would not reach him until Max was dead, begging his forgiveness for not being able to live any longer. For the times he himself had stood in the dark at the top of a cliff, or with a revolver in his hand, and thought of the darkness on the other side that had seemed like a rest and a relief. He wept as he had not on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when he had walked away from his own lines and into the enemy, looking for one last bullet that would end his suffering. It seemed as if all the tears of the world were behind his eyes. He pulled his legs up, rested his forehead on his knees, and gave the grief its head. And the sun shone down upon him and the clean smell of grass rose up to the sky

Finally, spent and emptied of every feeling, he looked over. Hamish was sitting close to him, shoulder to shoulder as they had many a cold night when they were on watch together. How had he never remembered those watches, with Hamish at his shoulder as steady as a brother. "Sorry," Rutledge said roughly and wiped his face on his sleeve like a schoolboy. He was vaguely unsurprised to notice that it was his khaki sleeve, his officers coat. Hamish elbowed him in the ribs and passed him a clean white linen handkerchief. His perfectly innocent expression made Rutledge laugh out loud. His ribs ached from weeping but it felt good to laugh. The slight smile that told him Hamish was pleased with his little joke made Rutledge laugh all the harder. For a moment he was frightened again, worried that he might not be able to stop, but the laughter died away as naturally as it had spring from him. He felt as if he had been wrung out and left to dry here in the sun.

There were still voices singing in the distance, and Rutledge could see a line of people moving along what appeared to be a cart track in the countryside. The trees had grown back again and the line moved from sunshine to shade. He smiled to hear that the mademoiselle was up to her usual tricks. "What's that about?"

Hamish followed his gesture to the people in the distance. "Ah, that'll be the transports." Rutledge looked over at him and Hamish raised an eyebrow. "Going home, ye ken."

"Oh." Rutledge looked down. "I don't know - that is, there was a time when I believed but now -"

"Don't be daft, man. " Hamish elbowed him in the ribs again. "You're here, aren't you? "

"I suppose so." Rutledge stood, brushing the grass from his trousers, and offered Hamish a hand up. "I -" he laughed lightly. "I don't know what to say. I'm glad you found me."

The Scotsman looked down with a slight, pleased smile. "Your parents will be waiting," he said. '

Rutledge released his hand. Something in the way he had said it - "Are you not coming?"

Hamish blushed, making him look even younger. "Aye, in a while. I thought I would bide here for a wee bit." He looked at the ground before glancing back up at Rutledge. "I would wait on Fiona."

Rutledge nodded. He held out his hand and Hamish took it. They stood like that, eye to eye and hand in hand. "I would not have survived as long as I did without you," Rutledge said, his voice as steady as he could make it. ."Even when you were gone, even after - I relied on you. You were my saving angel."

"You are a good man, Ian Rutledge," Hamish said firmly. "It was an honor to serve with ye."

They drew apart and, for a moment, Rutledge was sure that Hamish would salute him. He didn't want Hamish to do that. But then the smile on Hamish's face told him that they were once again thinking parallel thoughts. Hamish gave him a wave and Rutledge returned it. Then he turned away and started for the cart track and the great line of people .

He started to jog in anticipation of the meetings ahead, and then to run for the sheer joy of movement without pain. His parents, all the men he had fought with, Ross and his godfather, even Jean. He could forgive Jean now. Meredith Channing, who had died overseas still nursing her husband. Sergeant Gibson. All his colleagues that had passed on before him. The only person that he wouldn't see - he slowed to a walk. Frances would be grieving him. And young Ian and the girls. They would make their way to him soon enough, of course, and he wouldn't want to hurry them. As he could make his way to his parents. There was no hurry now.

He turned and looked back. He could see Hamish standing at ease, his arms crossed over his chest, looking out over the fields as if they were the hills of his beloved highlands. Standing by himself.

Rutledge stood irresolute for a moment. But only for a moment.

"You do know," he said when he was once again beside his corporal, “that regulations require two men on sentry duty ."

Hamish gave him a sidelong look. "I'm not likely to fall asleep. Sir.”

"Never the less." Rutledge stood at parade rest with his hands clasped behind his back. They had stood this way many times before. and the silence between them was easy and warm. It seemed that dusk was coming on, the sun sinking behind them and their long shadows stretching forth on the grass. On the road over the hills to home, the men were still singing. The tune was one that Rutledge had heard before but this time they put the right words to it and sang with enthusiasm.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,

for auld lang syne,

we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

Hamish was humming along with the chorus and he sang the next verse under his breath.

We twa ha' run about the braes,

and pulled the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd mony a weary foot,

sin' auld lang syne.

We twa ha' paidl'd in the burn,

frae morning sun till dine;

But seas between us braid ha' roar'd

sin' auld lang syne.

Rutledge smiled into the night. He leaned a little to the right and was rewarded with the press of a shoulder against his own. Rutledge added his voice to the song.

And there's a hand, my trusty friend,

and give us a hand of thine,

And we'll take a right cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll take a cup of kindness yet

For the sake of auld lang syne.


End file.
